


Of All the Places

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had <i>really</i> not expected to see them again in Amsterdam, while he was attempting to make a rather large business deal.</p>
<p>To be fair, it had been nearly ninety years, Elijah had never sent out a blanket “stay out of Amsterdam, you damn kids” warning, and he was fairly certain that none of them knew he did anything other than police the activities of idiotic young vampires. While that would have been a horrific calling, Elijah wasn’t certain the by-day persona of large-scale properties broker was much better. (Though it did keep him adding liquid assets to his brokered assets.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of All the Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tequierocastiel (CastielSaltzman)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CastielSaltzman/gifts).



> Written for the [tvdfic_exchange](http://community.livejournal.com/tvdfic_exchange). I adored this prompt as soon as I saw it. I don’t know if it’s exactly what the requester had in mind when she gave the prompt, but I am absolutely willing to write more in this train of fic, because I absolutely adore it. No, seriously. Fun fact: I had all but the last, like, thousand words of a much larger, original idea for this prompt done, like, fucking Saturday, when the idea for this hit me in the head like a meat grinder, and I couldn’t not write it. So -- here you go. Beta’d by the amazing [smallearthcat](http://smallearthcat.livejournal.com). (Who also liked this idea, so hopefully it goes over well.)

After the last time, he had truly never expected to see them again. It was, he felt, a valid expectation. No one had come out of the skirmish unscathed, and everyone was at least marginally at fault for the entire debacle. When he had taken his last cursory glance to be assured that the woman was well and truly dead -- or, at the least, that Niklaus was alive enough to put her the rest of the way under if she was not -- Elijah made what he thought would have been his last goodbye to the children of Mystic Falls.

He had no need for _thank yous_ or muted manly handshakes. There were other ventures that needed his looking after, and this venture was complete, barring any _more_ unforeseen circumstances. And, were Elijah completely honest with himself, which he rarely was, being so near the doppelganger brought back memories he would rather stay buried with his human life.

He had truly, truly never expected to see them again. 

He had _really_ not expected to see them again in Amsterdam, while he was attempting to make a rather large business deal.

To be fair, it had been nearly ninety years, Elijah had never sent out a blanket “stay out of Amsterdam, you damn kids” warning, and he was fairly certain that none of them knew he did anything other than police the activities of idiotic young vampires. While that would have been a horrific calling, Elijah wasn’t certain the by-day persona of large-scale properties broker was much better. (Though it did keep him adding liquid assets to his brokered assets.)

It happened like this: 

“Now that we’ve sealed the deal,” the slim, attractive, slimy-as-fuck broker said, smiling at Elijah in a way that Kol sometimes did, just before he murdered someone messily, “what do you say to drinks? That fine establishment there seems to be the hot new place for the twenties set.”

Elijah glanced across the way to the bar, with its gleaming doors and bright lights. It seemed clean and classy, and both men and women in beautifully fitted night-on-the-town attire were walking in and out. It was easy to guess what the other man was after. Elijah, however, knew when a connection was important to maintain. It was all a balance of burden to benefit. He smiled charmingly, “Sounds fabulous.”

He recognized one or two area vampires in the bar, but they weren’t idiots, so Elijah let his sleazy compatriot do all their talking when it came to chatting up women. Unsurprisingly, he was rather good at it. He was intensely good-looking, and he could roll on the charm when needed; the rise in his pulse that indicated that all he wanted was a good pounce wasn’t something that normal women could pick up on.

Two or three whiskies in, skeazy let out a low whistle and pointed to a secondary entrance. “Jesus, man. Will you look at that?”

And Elijah did look, because the doppelganger had just walked in. It took him a moment to consider whether the stunningly dressed woman was Elena or Katherine until a blonde woman entered behind her and recognition parsed the second woman as well. Caroline Forbes. That meant that Elena Gilbert was in Amsterdam.

“And her _friend_ ,” skeazy was still saying. “My God, we have to make a play at that. We would be doing a disservice to all men of our attractiveness if we don’t, Elijah.” Elijah raised an eyebrow at him, but followed as skeazy made a beeline toward Elena and Caroline.

Elena herself was standing confidently, surveying the room with a small smile on her face, not smug like Katherine’s had tended to be, but satisfied, as though she were where she had intended to go. Caroline looked like sun, and the darkness be damned if it was going to keep her from shining. She would literally kick its ass.

Skeazy got within range of Elena fairly quickly, and opened his mouth to speak-- “Hello, miss, you are--” but Elena caught sight of Elijah and completely disregarded him.

Elijah respected that.

“Elijah?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. “I didn’t know you were in Amsterdam.”

He gave her a thin smile. “Nor I you, Elena.” Elijah caught some of skeazy’s baffled rambling but tuned him out.

“It’s been a very long time,” she said, offering him a fonder smile than her peremptory smile of greeting had been.

Elijah glanced to Caroline, who was watching them with an inscrutable expression. “I suppose that it has. Might I offer you a nightcap? We can catch up.” Elijah held out a hand respectfully.

Elena let out a giggle, but she accepted Elijah’s hand, meeting Caroline’s eyes briefly. “Offer me a nightcap? It’s 2098, Elijah. People don’t offer nightcaps anymore.”

“Some niceties deserved to stay.” Elijah tucked Elena’s arm properly into his own as they proceeded out of the bar and onto the street. Caroline came up on Elena’s other side, and Elijah had the strangest feeling that they were supporting her, somehow. “With those who remember such niceties, or who remember that I practiced such niceties, I prefer to still offer them as such.”

“Then by all means,” Elena said, smiling as she pulled herself up against his arm. “Nightcap away.”

Elijah’s flat was rather more like a penthouse, rising above the center of Amsterdam, in one of the very oldest parts of the city. “I bought the building three-hundred-fifty years ago,” Elijah explained. “All I had to do was maintain it and build properly with the times.”

Caroline laughed heartily at that. “So for those of us who are rich _now_ , you mean if we invest right, we’ll, like, secretly own the universe in like four hundred years?”

Raising an eyebrow, Elijah said, “I wouldn’t put it that way, but you will be incredibly wealthy, yes. Rather like the Salvatores, who needn’t compel their wealth.”

When Caroline made a face, Elijah knew he’d stepped in _something_ , though with women, he never knew precisely what. Instead, he asked, “What have you done with your immortality, Elena?”

“Pretty much the same thing I did with my humanity,” Elena said, shrugging. She was pacing the penthouse, going through collections on the walls of books, figures, paintings; all things that Elijah had collected through centuries of travel and study.

“You have not gone anywhere but Amsterdam?” Elijah asked.

“Nope, this is pretty much our first stop. Apparently it’s a smaller world than we thought, if we ran into you right off the bat,” Caroline said, waving her hands dramatically.

Elijah stood to obtain a carved tiger figurine that Elena was staring at from a shelf above her head. Handing it to her, he asked, “Do you wish to see the world?” He turned to Caroline. “Is that why the two of you left Mystic Falls?”

Caroline looked at Elena and sighed, then looked at her feet. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

Elena turned to give Caroline a dirty look, her long, straight hair spinning around her. Looking at Elijah, she said, “Yes. I want to see the world. I’m going to live forever, right? So long as nobody kills me? Then I want to see everything. Learn things. That sounds reasonable, right?”

“Yes, totally reasonable,” Caroline interjected, before Elijah could respond. “I even _totally_ support why you’re _actually_ doing it, just as long as you’ll admit why that is. To me, to Elijah, to a fucking compelled hippie; I don’t care.”

Elijah sighed. “How about I get those nightcaps, then?” He left the room to find the bourbon, the good bourbon, and three decanters. By the time he returned, Elena was sitting on an oversized chair with her feet tucked under her, the carved cat still in her hands, and she was pointedly not speaking with Caroline, who was out on the balcony having a conversation on her headset.

Elijah set the bourbon and the decanters on a small table made, really, just for such things, and poured the three glasses to two fingers. He handed one to Elena and kept one for himself. As Elena sipped it, he said, “There’s no one path, Elena. No one right way to be.”

After taking another sip of bourbon, Elena said, “I have this strange mental picture of you, you know. It’s 50% oh shit I’m going to get kidnapped, and 50% fairy godmother.” Tilting her head up to look him straight in the eye, Elena said, “Kind of like, every time I see you, after I haven’t for a while, I have a very short panic attack, but then I sort of just feel like everything’s going to be all right.”

Elijah let a small smile slip. “I must be truthful, Elena.” He took a small sip of his bourbon. “I have no dire intentions upon your person at this time.” He took another sip. “However, as I am not certain how comfortable I am with being your fairy godmother, I may invent one just to keep the balance in place.”

Elena choked on her bourbon as she was swallowing before letting out a full-throated laugh. Caroline came back into the sitting room just to raise both eyebrows at the pair of them. 

“I’m not sure what you did,” Caroline said, pointing a finger at Elijah, “but keep doing it. Also, I have been formally instructed by the powers that be that I should just tell Elijah what’s going on, since he’s old and wise and stuff.”

Elena sputtered. “ _Powers that be_? Jeremy, Bonnie, and Klaus are not the _powers that be_ , unless, by powers that be, you mean the powers that seriously need to be _punched_.”

Elijah decided it would be better to ask one question at a time. Though, really, those three names in conjunction, even after ninety years, boggled his mind.

“Yes, Elena.” Caroline turned to Elijah. “Elena dumped both Stefan and Damon. They were out of control. Always fighting, making her choose, getting everyone else involved, pulling in other vampires, werewolves, the powers of nature, _everything_. So she told them she couldn’t be with _either_ of them and asked them to leave. Of course, everyone lost their shit, there was a giant brawl, and we had to knock them both out and head for the hills. I’m sure they’ll find us eventually, but really, sanity and all, I think they got the picture.”

“And I left them each a letter,” Elena said, staring into her bourbon, which was piteously near empty. Elijah poured her more and Elena gave him a sarcastic cheer with it. “I really do want to see the world, Caroline. I really do. But I didn’t run away.”

Caroline threw her arms up in the air and picked up the glass of bourbon that had been left on the table for her, then dropped into the chaise diagonal from Elena’s chair. “I’m all ears, Elena.”

Elena looked up at Elijah, searching. Elijah wasn’t sure what she was searching for, or whether she found it, but she said, “I love them both, Caroline. Equally. And it was tearing them apart. Tearing everyone apart. But mostly, it was tearing their love for _each other_ apart, and that wasn’t right. I gave myself time to decide.” Elena laughed, and downed most of the bourbon. “I gave myself too much time to decide. But the right thing to do was to give them back to each other, like Katherine was never able to do.” Elena turned over the carving of the cat in her palm. “I didn’t run away, Caroline. I moved on. And I’m letting Stefan and Damon do the same.”

There was silence, for a moment, as Elijah considered the weight of Elena’s words against his own experience in both love and life. He had seen the love that the brothers bore for each other, and the way Elena tore them apart. They were both rash, and they were both passionate. Both would love again, given time to heal. Elena had, in all likelihood, made the correct choice.

But Caroline broke the silence. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You’re such an idiot.” She wiped her fingers under her eyes, then said, “A brilliant, brilliant idiot.”

Elena finished her bourbon before she replied. “I didn’t just decide overnight.” She gripped the cat figurine a little harder as she stood. “But it’s the right thing to do.” Elena turned to Elijah and smiled lightly, her game face back on. “It’s getting late. We should take our leave of you.” A twinkle held in Elena’s eye, despite everything, and Elijah appreciated it.

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” Elijah replied, catching Elena’s game and accepting it for what it was. “I have plenty of room for both of you to stay here tonight. While I do not doubt your ability to compel yourselves somewhere far nicer than this, I assure you, the service is astounding.”

Elena smiled. “How could we ever decline such a gentlemanly offer?” Caroline rolled her eyes, but followed.

“I presume you have things somewhere in the city?” Elijah asked.

“Of course,” Caroline said, as they followed Elijah down a hallway toward the other side of the penthouse.

“If you let me know where they are, I’ll arrange to have them here for you in the morning.” He stopped in the middle of a hall with four doors. “Directly to my left, you have the peach room, which is the first guest room I modeled.” Elijah clicked the door opened and flicked the lights on. He stepped quickly across the hall to a room that was directly parallel and said, “This is the guest bathroom. Full shower and bathtub, very good water pressure, new pipes.” He walked to the end of the hall and opened the door on the same side of the hall as the bathroom. “This is the aqua room, which is the second guest room I modeled.” Elijah opened the door and flicked the lights on. He gestured directly across the hall to the last door. “That is my bedroom, if you find yourselves in need of anything.”

“Impressive,” Caroline said, wandering back to the peach room. After a moment, she popped her head back out and stared at Elijah. “Is there a flatscreen TV in the boudoir?”

Elijah quirked a lip. “It seemed efficient.”

Elena laughed and stepped into the aqua room, dropping herself onto the blankets and closing her eyes. Stepping inside briefly, Elijah said, “There are some sleeping items that I believe might be roughly your size in one of the drawers, left by a friend of Rebekah’s.”

“Mm, tantalizing,” Elena said, not moving a muscle. Elijah stepped back out, and went to relay the same news to Caroline.

“Thanks,” Caroline said. As Elijah moved to go, Caroline added, “You know, you’re being creepily accommodating. Last I checked, we weren’t friends. You stayed out of our business and we pretended you didn’t exist.” She rolled on the bed to face him. “What gives?”

As much as he would have liked to have simply smiled and walked away, instead, Elijah replied, “You are misinformed. While it has sometimes taken an odd form, I believe that Elena and myself are friends.” He paused. “When you live as long as we do, Caroline, you learn that friendship is not being daily at one’s side, or even in constant agreement with one.”

“Does it involve trying to kill them?” Caroline asked, eyes hard.

“If I look to true intentions, I do not believe that since truly knowing one another, either Elena or I has tried to kill the other.” He smiled, now, with a small secret. “I might even argue that the free trade of information between us has become a given.”

“Unless your family was involved,” Caroline shot back.

Elijah raised his eyebrows. “If you are using Niklaus’ advice as leverage, I truly doubt I will be having to side with my family against the pair of you any time soon.”

Caroline scowled, then laughed. “All right, fine, whatever. You win! This still feels weird. Like one of those old Victorian movies, where the old rich guy takes in the poor street urchin and teaches her to become a lady.”

Elijah couldn’t help but clear his throat at the comparison. “I believe that is the second time tonight I have effectively been compared to a fairy godmother. I may have to work on being more intimidating, if adolescent vampires are wandering around thinking I’m going to build them pumpkin carriages.”

Elijah had to wait the laughter out in order to get the location of Elena and Caroline’s things, but he did feel rather accomplished once he had.

He didn’t dwell too long on why he felt so accomplished.

The next morning, he compelled a very young vampire, still absolutely terrified of him, and for good reason, to bring him and his guests breakfast inconspicuously. He had done some thinking, and a bit of preparing, throughout the night, and he felt fairly confident he had served the purpose he was meant to serve in this particular instance.

When Elena awoke, Caroline awoke, as though she had herself set to Elena’s wavelength. Elijah found it endearing, and also like he ought to recognize that emotion. It was like it was on the tip of his tongue, a flavor just out of reach.

The girls both enjoyed their breakfast, though they seemed a bit hesitant, at first, at the idea of simply having it brought to them. Once breakfast was complete, and both girls had bathed and gotten dressed for the day, Elijah broached his idea.

“It has occurred to me,” he said, dropping a black leather folder, tied closed, onto the table before Elena, “that I am the perfect conduit for your travels.” Elijah put up a hand when Elena started to comment. “When you’re young, you don’t know the places, the people, the _do_ s and _don’t_ s. I am not young. I have been to all of the places that you dream of, and likely even own property in all of those places. All I propose is that you let me give you this list of places to stay and people to talk to. What you do, who you see, how you do it, I don’t care. This is simply my gift to you.”

“It does make it so you could conveniently find us whenever you wanted, though,” Caroline said, eyes narrowed.

Elijah shrugged. “Then go places not listed, if you can find any. If I wanted to find you, you having this list would neither help nor hinder my search, I assure you. All I want to do is give you a safety net.” He smiled a little. “And also a network. A vampire with a network is a far more powerful vampire than a vampire who runs alone.”

“So you want us to just associate ourselves with _you_ ,” Elena asked, scowling.

“Only if you wanted to cheat. This is simply a list of names. How you associate yourself with them is entirely up to you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Think of it as a very risky, worldwide game.”

Caroline turned to face Elena, clearly leaving the decision up to her. Elena was silent for a long while, staring at the black, leather book before her.

“Fine,” she said, snatching up the book and looking up to meet Elijah’s eyes, a sort of dare in them. “I accept your proposal. What do I get if I win?”

Elijah sat back. “Excuse me?”

Elena raised an eyebrow. “You said it was a game. All the places you have power, all the powerful people. Fine. If I can do it, too, what do I get?”

Elijah stared for a while. What could he offer, when the game _itself_ \-- but Elena’s eyes. They said something all their own. Something he didn’t think about.

“Anything you want. Name it, and it’s yours,” Elijah said, spreading his arms.

“Done,” Elena said. She turned to Caroline. “I think we have a plane to catch. Shall we?” Caroline shrugged and smiled at Elijah as she trailed after Elena, but Elijah took a moment to pull back again.

There were things that Elijah did not think about, had not thought about in years. And he would not do so today.

But maybe someday. He was, after all, immortal.


End file.
